Coming up for air… from the sea of Wikipedia

For the past few months, I’ve been editing Wikipedia in earnest. Why? Because it needed help.

I started by editing the Long Island Radio template, in order to re-integrate the east end stations into it and to indicate how the areas of the island are divided. That was all well and good, but then I moved on the individual articles of the Long Island radio stations.

Most of them needed editing on some level. Some of the edits were minor, but a few of them were near-major. One article that needed help was the one for WLIR-FM. It has the full history of the modern rock format on WLIR from its early days until its ultimate sale by Jarad Broadcasting in 2004. This information was all good, except that this history crosses multiple frequencies, and all this history was “stuck” on the 107.1 WLIR article. There were no references from 92.7 (WQBU) or 98.5 (WBON) to indicate that this history happened there, too.

Thus began my major editing and moving of the history of WLIR to its own article. As I was editing, I realized that WLIR is not a defunct station. The legacy of WLIR is alive on the streaming station WLIR.FM. To call WLIR a defunct radio station wouldn’t be right.

The result of all this editing can be seen now in two articles:

WLIR-FM – the original article, complete with the history of the 107.1 FM.

WLIR – the new article, chronicling the humble beginnings in Garden City on 92.7 FM, the “dare to be different” era of the 1980s, the post-grunge 1990s, its final days on 107.1 FM, and its new beginning on the internet.

I’ve also added references in the WQBU and WBON articles to the WLIR history.

It’s been quite a major undertaking, and at this point I’m taking a brief rest from editing Wikipedia. Articles are never really “done” on Wikipedia. Time passes, events occur, and if not kept up-to-date, the information can fall into obsolescence. The work is never done, it just gets put on pause.

The WLIR logo used from 1998 to sign off on 1/9/2004. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)